Tabletop Games Have Weird Politics: If the players bring about Jesus' death, great!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tabletop Games Have Weird Politics: If the players bring about Jesus' death, great!

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Triskelli: Sep 27, 2011; I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS

Comstar posted:

Are all the various sides balanced in that can all win, or are some easier to win than others?

Nah, there�s definitely still some unbalanced factions there: the Woodland Alliance and the Eyrie are top-tier point earners, while the Lizard Cult and the Corvid Conspiracy are quite bad at scoring points. I�ve seen most of the factions win so it�s not impossible, but it�s not a finely balanced game for sure.

The other expansion races are

Moles: Imperialist assholes that think invading the forest is a fun side-project

Crows: Mafia-terrorists. Kinda the most garbled faction because the designers gave up on the idea of the crows being a secret police that clogs up people�s hands with useless cards.

Badgers: Crusaders/Conquistadors that are trying to find holy relics

Rats: Fascists. They get points for clearing out spaces of all but their own rats. There is also a giant rat who makes all of da rules.

E: it�s a shame because the Lizards felt like the most opinionated but weakest faction in the game. As far as I can tell the intention was for them to win via Dominance rather than points (rule a majority of an ethnic group), but getting to the threshold where that�s an option is difficult enough on its own.

Triskelli fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Aug 18, 2021

# ? Aug 18, 2021 14:12

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:21

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

The lizard cult are specifically religious extremists who recruit from whichever ethnic group is 'outcast' at the time (most cards of their suit in the discard pile).

# ? Aug 18, 2021 14:22

Biffmotron: Jan 12, 2007

fr0id posted:

This is a really good post and the kind of thing this thread should strive for. Would you care to talk more about your critiques of the COIN series?

Sure. So, any game makes simplifying assumptions and abstractions so that it you have something playable. We have hitpoints instead of a complete biophysical model of the body, or a chit that represents the 4th Armored Division and a turn represents a full days worth of moving and fighting. For a serious game, one which aspires to simulate reality, we have to ask if the simplifying assumptions are teaching bad lessons. A very concrete example might be if we're playing Kriegspiel in 1913 and not knowing how well these new-fangled Maxim guns work, we decide they mostly don't, and in 1914 Colonel von Blimp orders a frontal change into entrenchments with 80% casualties.

The COIN series make a lot of simplifying assumptions, which my evaluation of us is as follows. I've only really played Fire in the Lake (Vietnam) and A Distant Plain (Afghanistan), so this may not apply to the entire series.

The good: Nominal allies have different win conditions. In Fire in the Lake, the Americans win based on popular support and troops out of country and ARVN wins based on military control. Similarly, the Viet Cong win on support and the North Vietnamese win based on military control. I played one game as ARVN when my US ally just went all in on intervention and walked away with an easy victory. Fundamentally, America as an imperial presence does not have the same interests as the locals, is one of those things which everybody forgets constantly to their detriment.

The neutral: COIN is fundamentally a card-driven game. Each turn you'll draw a card which will say what order the eligible players act in (if you went last round, you can't go this turn). If you take the event on the card, the next player gets a full turn worth of operations + special activities, or you can take operations + special activities, and give the player the event, or you can take just operations and limit the next player to operations in a single province. So the game does something interesting with tempo and the idea that it may be worth burning time to try and limit how the board can change, but I'm not sure how well it works in practice.

The bad: Each region in a COIN game has a popular support marker which indicates whether the people there support the government or the insurgents, which can be flipped by actions. For example, airstrikes make the people anti-government, and insurgent terror collects resource but turns the people against the insurgency. The heart of the game is based around this really simple model that people in some place like us on a scale from 1 to 7, and if we get that number up, we'll win. It's just a reification of the Hamlet Evaluation Program (pdf link) in game form, with the idea that America should do less bad stuff (Predator strikes) and more good stuff (build schools). And it's a better model than "well, the 4th Armored Division is in this province so therefore we control it", but as current events demonstrate, it's not a great model for understanding the stability of states.

And on a similar point, while the interventionist faction (NATO/America) has effectively unlimited resources, every other faction has to pay for what they do with some kind of supply point. So for all that the game is about unconventional warfare, my experience is that how you win is the other side exhausts their resources trying stuff that doesn't work out, and you get several turns to act without effective opposition. I'm not sure that supply is a good abstraction of insurgent logistics and financing.

And I wouldn't care so much if COIN was just GMT and a bunch of nerds, but Volko Ruhnke is an actual CIA analyst, so having bad models can be a little catastrophic.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 19:20

Biffmotron: Jan 12, 2007

One more anecdote. I've been a tabletop RPG nerd for decades now, and a while back I did a research project on using ttRPGs as a training tool, which foundered on the gap between:

1) in a ttRPG, you can play someone with a very different perspective on the world making decisions which you don't have to make now.
2) but unless you're very good at it, you'll play yourself with a layer of stereotyped Otherness (see all the awful White Wolf ethnic splats we've been talking about).

As part of this project, I got to play a PaxSims game based around conflict in the South China Sea with actual officers at the US Army War College-not my blog, but you get the idea. PaxSims are basically facilitated roleplaying exercises with the GM adjudicating soft power underneath the chrome. The system is a 2d6+N vs moving DC, and from a game design perspective I think that could really benefit from stealing pbtA Moves or BitD dice pools, but that's just me.

What I found interesting is that everybody, despite nominally being the leaders of different country with interests in the region, wound up roleplaying as themselves.

The US and the Philippines were run by US Army Officers, and they embarked on a series of multilateral training exercises, which is what militaries actually do for a bunch of reasons. Training builds capabilities, so that when you have to do a thing in combat you're better at it. It builds relationships, which are especially important between partner nations. And it's a threat display between rational strategic adversaries, "Don't try anything stupid, because you know that I'm this strong."

China was run by Dave, who had a background as a family counselor, and he organized a series of bilateral meetings with other nations because in his experience, people need to talk through their issues one-on-one to develop healthy relationships and find compromises that reduce conflict.

Indonesia was run by John, previously a corporate lawyer, and he set up big multinational conferences on the South China Sea, not because multination conferences really do anything, but because when everybody is in the same place, the middle-level people who write the position papers can get in a position where they can cut a deal that the senior people can all agree on.

And I was Vietnam, and I gave every Vietnamese fishing boat a camcorder and set up a government program to record and database all maritime interactions , because I'm a social scientist, and how I persuade is I establish the theoretical paradigm, I get the data, I find the facts, and you'll agree with the inescapable conclusions.

So it was fun, but more as a journey of self discovery than one of serious international geopolitics.

# ? Aug 18, 2021 19:53

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Biffmotron posted:

So it was fun, but more as a journey of self discovery than one of serious international geopolitics.

What's the alternative? The game designers decide on geopolitical goals and preferred means of reaching them for each nation and mechanically encourage the participants to follow along?

# ? Aug 21, 2021 09:48

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

Ronwayne posted:

The Technocracy also has a theoretically salvageable 'SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!' faction, for that particular nerd fetish of musk-esque technoimperialism.

Hey, it gets a certain proportion of New Vegas players every time.

It's remarkable House is as popular and defended as he is. Maybe I could understand 10 years ago, or when I played NV in 2015, but not 2021.

Archonex posted:

And it's obvious you're impressing your own personal political views onto the setting. Which is fine! Part of what makes the OWoD games is that they are so open to many different interpretations. But that doesn't change the fact that the actual work we're discussing is a bit more nuanced than it simply just being a work-wide metaphor for the glorious revolution against capitalism and the righteous downfall of the liberal ideology.

I almost certainly know less about oMage than many in here but my take has always been it's less about capitalism and more about modernity, which are not in fact fundamentally linked Many philosophers have and still continue to critique modernity and do not focus on capitalism at all or at least capitalism is downstream from the real fundamental problems of the modern world. Nietzsche is probably the most famous critic of modernity ever and capitalism meant very little to him. (I also wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of young strongly countercultural types like WW writers read Nietzsche)

To me, Mage: The Ascension is less Marx and more Weber.

quote:

MAX WEBER S SOCIOLOGY OF RESIGNATION

To a degree, sociology emerged as a response to the shock of the transformation from traditional to complex society, and one of its major purposes was the diagnosis of what was perceived as an ailing body politic. A massive literature grew up about the notion of social disorganization. From positivist ranks came Durkheim's anomie, while what Shils has called 'German sociological romanticism' spawned Marx's entfremdung, as well as the formulations of Tonnies, Sombart, and Vierkandt.2 In all of these the Hegelian legacy is graphically in evidence, as is the primitivism of romantic ideology in which the bucolic and agrarian is felt to be inestimably better than the urbanized and commercial. The work of these authors is dominated by the tone of lament for a quaint if brutal world that is being crushed to atoms beneath the industrial steamroller.

Max Weber's mode of analysing this process is characteristically individual. Instead offocusing on the individual's estrangement (Marx), or the structural strain of society-at-large (Durkheim), or the polarity between folk and urban existence (Tonnies, Vierkandt), he used the concepts intellectualization and rationalization to explain a larger process called the 'Disenchantment of the World' (Entzauberung der Welt). Weber borrowed the term disenchantment (Entzauberung) from Schiller, the arch-romantic whose poetry was used by Beethoven in the 'Ode to Joy' of his Ninth Symphony. Schiller wanted to respiritualize the world, and Beethoven's musical setting gave this goal an heroic march-tempo. Weber seems to have taken these ideas into the very core of his sociology. The process of disenchantment was set in motion in the primordial past, it rolls on unhindered as the automatic guidancesystem of civilization. It banishes superstition, myth, and magic, and replaces them with a 'realistic' approach to the world.

Although its causes are to be traced to the Hebrew Prophets, it is with the lonely individualism of the Protestant faith that the process of disenchantment begins in earnest. Divorced from his priests and the Church, with its elaborate hierarchy that served to explain the most minute details of everyday life within the sacred precepts of revealed doctrine, Western man fell back upon the painful and 'inhumane' individualism which Weber associateso closely with capitalism.3 'The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effiects of magical and sacramental forces on salvation, should creep in.'4 The liberating aspects of disenchantment are, for Weber, secondary to the massive social disorganization it causes for individual and society. When magical forces are eliminated from life, the mind turns back upon itself and tries to reconstruct the world in 'rational' terms. Intellect becomes the sole arbiter of meaning and judgment. And, 'as intellectualism suppresses belief in magic, the world's processes become disenchanted, lose their magical signiScance, and henceforth simply 'are' and 'happen' but no longer signify anything'.5 Weber went to some length to demonstrate the effect and extent of disenchantment in every sphere of life. In his fragments on the sociology of music he tries to show how Western music has developed along peculiarly 'rational' lines, as opposed to that of other cultures.6 Religion, business operations, statecraft and, above all, bureaucracy attest to the assertion that if any feature can be said to characterize the history of Western societyy it is the systematic elimination of the magical and irrational.

The expulsion of myths and magic-disenchantment per se-should not be interpreted too narrowly. It is not simply that religion as an institution has been routinized and bureaucratized to the point at which mysteries no longer play a significant role in its functions. Disenchantment aSects and radically alters the common-sense logic, experiences, and conduct of everyday life. When Wordsworth lamented that 'The world is too much with us' and yearned to

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

he was depicting the full impact of disenchantment as it alters consciousness and constricts imagination and the senses. In Schiller, Wordsworth and other romantics disenchantment is conceived as a woeful state of aesthetic affairs, and not so much a process that inexorably moves civilization towards an unhappy goal. With Weber, the processual element is more pronounced, but seldom stated as a general theory of cultural development/degeneration.

Weber was in general cynical about philosophies of history, and openly hostile to academic prophets who claimed special knowledge about the destiny of mankind.7 Nonetheless, within his oeurre one finds statements that clearly identify disenchantment as an overall trend of civilization as a whole. He views the ecstatic and magical features of religion as being incrementally extirpated through the routinization of charisma. Mythological formulae cannot stand before the cold light of the rationality that comes with the purposive organization of religious faiths. In the West, where this process has been strongly articulated through Protestantism and the Enlightenment, the direction of culture along a disenchanted course cannot be altered. Given this implication of unalterable 'fate', what recourse is left to the individual ? Apart from finding solace in the churches, which Weber regards with a patronizing sympathy, there seem to be few paths open since 'precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life . . . into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations'.8 Weber himself chose the expedient of dealing with the meaninglessness of a disenchanted world from day to day. Yet he never held that his own 'sublime resignation' could fill the symbolic vacuum left by the flight of the gods.

This, to me, sounds like oMage to the letter, to the point it's just plain text not even subtext.

An important distinction here, beyond the focus on more than just capitalism, is the pessimism and fatalism. From what long time Mage fans have told me, each Edition was radically different. 1st Edition was these rebellious heroes fighting against The Establishment with no real hope of winning but you have to fight. 2nd Edition made it far more combative with big epic wars in space and there was a real sense of hope that Consensus could be wrestled away from the Technocracy's clutches. Revised reverses course and becomes even more pessimistic than 1st Edition. Nobody wins here, not even the Technocracy Everything is meaningless apathy and the best you can do is work at a soup kitchen.

Maybe this is incorrect or simplified, I have not read Revised that much or maybe at all, I barely remember it if I did. But the lack of any revolutionary spirit seems like a pretty big deal and, again, feeds into my interpretation of Mage as being far more about the crushing meaningless of modernity than about capitalism. But that's possibly because my own philosophical interests and beliefs align with that. I believed and read about that long before I knew what Mage was.

And on the topic of being "anti-science," and going back to my mention of non-capitalist focused critiques of modernity, this idea "science" is just one hegemonic thing is also a product of modernity that deserves critiquing and was done by folks with little interest in class analysis or whatever.

quote:

"In 1810, Goethe published On the Theory of Colors (Zur Farbenlehre) in two volumes, having worked on it for twenty years. His motivation was anything but academic or theoretical -- color theory was of direct and lasting significance for his philosophy overall. As Paul Lauxtermann explains, Goethe was repulsed by Newton's method of experimentation, specifically the way he manipulated light through prisms, putting "Nature on the rack" to make it conform to his hypotheses; a related expression of Goethe's rejection of scientific approaches that force, compel, or otherwise abuse nature is his reverence for pure math but his contempt for its application to natural phenomena in such a way that nature is "crucified." Goethe and his romantic contemporaries preferred a holistic, empirical approach to nature, as succinctly demonstrated in the penultimate strophe of Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned" (1798): "Sweet is the lore which Nature brings / Our meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous forms of things -- / We murder to dissect."

The editor of the correspondence between Schopenhauer and Goethe, Ludger Littkehaus, offers a compelling synopsis of why Goethe rejected Newtonian methods. The pressing of light through tiny openings, effectively shattering its unity in order to demonstrate a preconceived hypothesis, smacked to Goethe of Francis Bacon's Inquisitorial torture and subjugation of nature. Goethe's attacks on Newton are therefore "a secular rebellion against the experimental scientific-technical modernism" a new aggressive spirit that "robs human beings of their domicile in the world, in their living environment," destroying the unity of nature and the harmony between nature and the subject."

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Aug 23, 2021

# ? Aug 23, 2021 14:47

Biffmotron: Jan 12, 2007

Xander77 posted:

What's the alternative? The game designers decide on geopolitical goals and preferred means of reaching them for each nation and mechanically encourage the participants to follow along?

In short, yes. The RPG version of this debate is "does system matter?", and I come down pretty firmly on the side that system does matter. 2d6+k vs TN is an okay system, but PaxSims lives or dies on the skills of the facilitator to judge the realism of the choices the players are making and to come up with interesting consequences and wildcards. The rules bake in the choices of the designer about when you should pick up the dice and what happens. Making an attack roll in D&D and Going Aggro in Apocalypse World are similar in that you're attempting to move the story along by violence, but they have very different consequences.

I'm hardly an expert in the South China Sea, but my read of the situation is that China has staked claim to a lot of territory through legally dubious fortification of glorified reefs. Every other country in the region would benefit if China abandoned these claims, but no one wants to risk a shooting war over it, because individually they'd all lose. In my view, a better game would foreground the brinksmanship and fragile alliances of the region, as well as potential for an ecological collapse.

# ? Aug 24, 2021 20:19

Ronwayne: Nov 20, 2007; That warm and fuzzy feeling.

NikkolasKing posted:

Hey, it gets a certain proportion of New Vegas players every time.

It's remarkable House is as popular and defended as he is. Maybe I could understand 10 years ago, or when I played NV in 2015, but not 2021.

Its a philosophy that celebrates mediocre white men as becoming ubermensh by doing the same things that come naturally to them. That just by sitting there and being Rational Decision Makers or whatever, technology allows for an apotheosis where the comfortable will become even more comfortable and all human experience outside these bounds can not only be dismissed as irrelevant, but can be declared obsolete (i.e. using a technological distinction as a moral judgement. Their 19th century equivilents would've used "barbaric" and/or "savage").

Imagine God embodied as a Twitter Checkmark.

Its going to be more popular than ever because daydreaming rich idiots like Elon are the only ones with any vision of the future beyond "the same, but steadily worse".

Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Sep 11, 2021

# ? Sep 11, 2021 11:25

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

so because 1992 was a long time ago, there was a clan called the Malkavians. their clan flaw was "madness," which led to the 'fishmalk' trope (guy so off his nut he would carry around a raw fish and slap people with it)

in V5 (due out this year) they added this, explaining how Malks should be played (tl;dr: loving respectfully)
https://twitter.com/AlisonCybe/status/1441138597063639050?s=19

lol and then WW cut this whole section and it won't appear in the book

# ? Sep 23, 2021 22:49

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

"Fishmalk" generally is short-hand for "just be zAnY" and "random" to the point that it derails games and what other players want to do, by the way. See also Chaotic Stupid.

# ? Sep 23, 2021 23:00

CAPT. Rainbowbeard: Apr 5, 2012; My incredible goodposting transcends time and space but still it cannot transform the xbone into a good console.; Lipstick Apathy

My favorite clan is Malkavian, and I've always thought that this Fishmalk stuff is stupid and not funny at all.

Some people take the ball and run with it to some stupid places.

# ? Sep 23, 2021 23:29

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:

My favorite clan is Malkavian, and I've always thought that this Fishmalk stuff is stupid and not funny at all.

Some people take the ball and run with it to some stupid places.

a lot of people do chargen with malks backwards. with most concepts, you start with a want, and work to a gimmick (I want MONEY so I will be a GANGSTER VAMPIRE -> Giovanni, I want MAGIC so I will be a WIZARD VAMPIRE -> Tremere) Fishmalks do it backwards, starting with whatever quirky poo poo that's only had 9 diagnoses ever they found in the DSM, and going "and that's why I'm Malkavian!"

if you start with the want first, the clan usually falls into place.

# ? Sep 23, 2021 23:47

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

Shrecknet posted:

so because 1992 was a long time ago, there was a clan called the Malkavians. their clan flaw was "madness," which led to the 'fishmalk' trope (guy so off his nut he would carry around a raw fish and slap people with it)

in V5 (due out this year) they added this, explaining how Malks should be played (tl;dr: loving respectfully)
https://twitter.com/AlisonCybe/status/1441138597063639050?s=19

lol and then WW cut this whole section and it won't appear in the book

I have to disagree about not wearing a costume because -never mind, D'Angelo was a loving rad Nosferatu and Hope was the Malkavian, right

# ? Sep 23, 2021 23:56

Triskelli: Sep 27, 2011; I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS

Not tabletop games, but why do so many JRPGs have you fight & dethrone God?

# ? Sep 24, 2021 00:44

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

Shrecknet posted:

in V5 (due out this year) they added this, explaining how Malks should be played (tl;dr: loving respectfully)
https://twitter.com/AlisonCybe/status/1441138597063639050?s=19

lol and then WW cut this whole section and it won't appear in the book

Whatever was there is gone now.

# ? Sep 24, 2021 01:52

Randalor: Sep 4, 2011

Triskelli posted:

Not tabletop games, but why do so many JRPGs have you fight & dethrone God?

I'm going to guess an... interesting history of Christianity in Japan, combined with people actually taking the time to read the Bible and going "Wow, God is a dick,"

# ? Sep 24, 2021 02:26

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Besides, what else are you going to do with characters who can kill the equivalent of whole cities with each sword strike?

# ? Sep 24, 2021 02:29

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; by Azathoth

I saw Malks (back then) as a way to troll/push back at the "ANGST" Annericers that seemed to dominate the scene. Of course, back then I thought RANDOM MONKEY CHEESE humor was great, too.

# ? Sep 24, 2021 02:35

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

Angry brujah loving stuff up was the push back against the angst types

# ? Sep 24, 2021 02:42

Relevant Tangent: Nov 18, 2016; Tangentially Relevant

Triskelli posted:

Not tabletop games, but why do so many JRPGs have you fight & dethrone God?

because the gnostics were right, existence is a prison created by the demiurge, and teaching children/teens that so they're ready to help everyone else topple the demiurge off his (the demiurge is definitely male that's why the patriarchy is everywhere) throne is important

Malkavian PCs could be interesting because unlike the other clans there didn't need to be a reason you were Embraced. It's entirely possible your Sire just wanted to throw a grenade into Elysium in a way that was hard to trace back to them.

Relevant Tangent fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Sep 24, 2021

# ? Sep 24, 2021 04:41

Wanderer: Nov 5, 2006; our every move is the new tradition

Triskelli posted:

Not tabletop games, but why do so many JRPGs have you fight & dethrone God?

I'd need to go back and kick this around with a friend of mine for a bit, but taking a swing from what I know:

There's a weird daisy chain of creative influences going into JRPGs. Japan never really got into Dungeons & Dragons, but the original Wizardry was a big hit over there, and Wizardry was self-consciously trying to be a sort of early D&D sim. Hence, there ended up being a whole generation of anime, games, and manga--Slayers, Record of Lodoss War, the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest--which are running off of a quirky secondhand recreation of Western boilerplate fantasy. It's why there are so many of the traditional D&D archetypes in JRPG character balance, particularly early on.

As part of that quasi-medieval European setting that D&D generically has, it involves a church or something that looks like a church, and because there are very few practicing Christians in Japan, most Japanese developers have an outsider's perspective on its iconography. It already looks like fantasy bullshit to them, so they draw from it and use it to empower their other fantasy bullshit.

Many of them also want to write stories about a band of teenagers who are, for one reason or another, rejecting or fighting against authority; their setting is a Western fantasy takeoff set in a medieval pastiche; there's no greater authority in that kind of setting than the church; and the developers have no particular veneration for that church, so it's a natural place to look for an antagonist.

(This does not count most anything in the Shin Megami Tensei series, which is very self-consciously a comparative religion textbook with punching.)

# ? Sep 25, 2021 03:46

Ratoslov: Feb 15, 2012; Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Wanderer posted:

There's a weird daisy chain of creative influences going into JRPGs. Japan never really got into Dungeons & Dragons, but the original Wizardry was a big hit over there, and Wizardry was self-consciously trying to be a sort of early D&D sim. Hence, there ended up being a whole generation of anime, games, and manga--Slayers, Record of Lodoss War, the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest--which are running off of a quirky secondhand recreation of Western boilerplate fantasy. It's why there are so many of the traditional D&D archetypes in JRPG character balance, particularly early on.

It's more direct than that, sort of.

As I recall, basically what happend was a bunch of Japanese nerds got their hands on D&D Basic and played a campaign, which they took notes on at the same time. This 'replay' was distributed around the nerd convention circuits in mimeographed form and was really quite popular. It's title was Record of the Lodoss War. So these nerds approached TSR and asked them for a license to publish a translated version of D&D in Japan, and they were willing to put in all the work. TSR, characteristically, sent them a cease-and-desist. So instead they filed off the serial numbers on D&D, changed it so everything worked using D6es, and named it Sword World, which is the classic dungeon fantasy RPG of Japan.

# ? Sep 25, 2021 03:55

Wanderer: Nov 5, 2006; our every move is the new tradition

Ratoslov posted:

It's more direct than that, sort of.

As I recall, basically what happend was a bunch of Japanese nerds got their hands on D&D Basic and played a campaign, which they took notes on at the same time. This 'replay' was distributed around the nerd convention circuits in mimeographed form and was really quite popular. It's title was Record of the Lodoss War. So these nerds approached TSR and asked them for a license to publish a translated version of D&D in Japan, and they were willing to put in all the work. TSR, characteristically, sent them a cease-and-desist. So instead they filed off the serial numbers on D&D, changed it so everything worked using D6es, and named it Sword World, which is the classic dungeon fantasy RPG of Japan.

Huh. I had no idea, and that's really interesting; Wikipedia says a transcript of their campaign was actually serialized in a magazine for two years. Thanks for that.

# ? Sep 25, 2021 04:14

NikkolasKing: Apr 3, 2010

I think at least part of it is that big, hierarchical, complicated organizations just make for easy villains. It can be a religion like is usually depicted in JRPGs or it can be a corporation. Either works and I don't think there's always more to it than that.

Also a lot of JRPGs are very...existentialist? In fact a lot of Japanese pop media we get is. "Faith" is a form of inauthenticity or living in bad faith. Depending on God or a church for your meaning in life is a sign of weak consciousness. Some works are more explicit about this than others like Xenogears and Xenosaga but I think it's a pretty big theme in Final Fantasy X, too. That's a bit more debatable but I think that's the most obvious read.

Yunalesca: Yevon�s teachings and the Final Summoning give the people of Spira hope. Without hope, they would drown in their sorrow. Now, choose. Who will be your fayth? Who will be the one to renew Spira�s hope?
Yuna: No one. I would have gladly died. I live for the people of Spira, and would have gladly died for them. But no more! The Final Summoning�is a false tradition that should be thrown away.
Yunalesca: No. It is our only hope. Your father sacrificed himself to give that hope to the people. So they would forget sorrow.
Yuna: Wrong. My father� My father wanted�to make Spira�s sorrow go away. Not just cover it up with lies!
Yunalesca: Sorrow cannot be abolished. It is meaningless to try.
Yuna: My father� I loved him. So I� I will live with my sorrow, I will live my own life! I will defeat sorrow, in his place. I will stand my ground and be strong. I don�t know when it will be but someday, I will conquer it. And I will do it without�false hope.

NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Sep 25, 2021

# ? Sep 25, 2021 04:39

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

It might also be that existentially challenging god himself as creating an unjust world is less likely to rock the boat than challenging more terrestrial, realistic authority figures. I've heard that a lot more Japanese people practice their religion than actually believe in it, which is the inverse of America, where a lot of people don't bother to go to church but still report to believe in their god. Antitheism might be a lot less controversial over there.

But there also seems to be a tendency for a lot of Japanese media to get really abstract at the end, which I guess creates a feeling of escalation and conveniently gives writers a way to wriggle out of any issues with resolving the plot, and if you're already planning to abstractly go through a higher plane of existence, why not go knock out god while you're at it?

# ? Sep 25, 2021 16:34

Froghammer: Sep 8, 2012; Khajit has wares
if you have coin

Triskelli posted:

Not tabletop games, but why do so many JRPGs have you fight & dethrone God?

Reality is terrible, life is cruel, reality being terrible and life being cruel being caused by a direct actor who made them this way and can be held accountable for their misdeeds is a popular power fantasy

See also: QAnon

# ? Sep 26, 2021 16:59

bewilderment: Nov 22, 2007; man what

There was a request for it earlier in the thread so let's talk about
LANCER

Lancer is written (and has a lot of illustrations) by Tom Parkinson-Morgan, of the Kill Six Billion Demons webcomic, and Miguel Lopez. Tom does most of the mechanics. Miguel did most of the lore.

The Premise
Lancer is a space scifi mecha RPG. A lot of its initial broad strokes politics and setting-building are actually a result of its core mechanical aims.
It wants to be a game where:
You get into tactical mecha fights, which means there needs to be both conflicts, as well as people making those mechs.
You don't have to constantly spend time waiting for your mech to be repaired; which means it's easy to manufacture replacement parts or even 3D-print them.
You shouldn't need to care too much about money or the cost of replacing the mech you just wrecked in that last battle, which means easy access to that manufacturing.

and so, The Lore and Politics
(I'm going to leave out some side material, like the Aun)
At some point over the next 1000 years or so, humanity manages to send out ten giant colony ships throughout space. Over that same time period it collapses and self-destructs thanks to climate change, war, pollution, etc. This is referred to as 'The Fall'. It doesn't have a set date.

Small enclaves of people on Earth survive in bunkers and vaults and whatnot but by the time the pollution has cleared up and things can grow again society has regressed to the point that they think they might be the first humans to walk under the sun.
Eventually some of them find the first 'Massif vaults', stores of technology and history. Discovery of others sparks the 'Little Wars' until finally Earth, re-named 'Cradle', is fully united under the nation of Union. The Massif vaults are incredibly clear about what caused the Fall (capitalism, racism, tribalism, etc) and so what is later called the First Committee of Union vows not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Eventually Union manages to work out technology enough to receive communications from space. They promptly receive metaphorical psychic damage from centuries of SOS repeating last messages being sent to them. As far as they can tell, nobody made it. With a motto of "never again", FirstComm commits to spreading across the galaxy so that another Fall can never happen.

Two events then happne in relatively quick proximity time-wise.
Firstly, AI experiments on Deimos start some tech going haywire in the general vicinity of Mars, eventually resulting in the disappearance of Deimos and the manifestation of a being that calls itself RA which appears to exist only via electronic communication and control of tech. RA offers the following deal to humanity: if they agree to not do any serious transhumanism, and not to try and find RA, then in return it will stop the technological chaos and teach Union how to control and create more of the 'Non Human Persons' (like Advanced AIs that are also kind of extradimensional) that it has generated, as well as give them knowledge of how to create blinkgates that can allow FTL travel. Union agrees to the First Contact Accords.

Secondly, Union finds one of the ten colony ships... and they're doing fine. The Karrakin Trade Baronies might have resorted to a kind of corporate space feudalism as their form of government, but they're a thriving billions-strong civilisation with colonies of its own, that hasn't lost its history tracing back to Earth. They're also a bit miffed at these so called inheritors of Earth and begin a war for control... which Union wins, graciously giving the KTB membership in Union with some special status and independence relative to other worlds.

Having overcome two existential threats, right-wing elements in Union launch a coup. The Second Commission is dedicated to the ideals of 'anthrochauvinism' - humanity has overcome the crises before it and now nothing stands in the way of its manifest destiny of spreading across the galaxy. Never again shall Union be challenged by other cultures. Encouraging privatisation is a small price to pay for Union's spatial and cultural dominance.

It's another 1500 years before the tyranny of SecComm becomes too much to bear. Rumours that first contact with real biological sapient aliens ended in genocide are the final spark that sends a revolution sweeping through Union. The Third Committee rises, dedicated to a revival of FirstComm's utopian pillars, tempered by a new pragmatism:

1. All shall have their basic needs fulfilled.
2. No walls will stand between worlds - free movement.
3. No slavery or indentured servitude of any kind. The concept of resource scarcity is a myth.

In the 500 years since then, ThirdComm's goal is to try and raise as many worlds to 'Core' status as possible. The revolution stranded many worlds in the periphery as SecComm's control pulled back. Some are desperate for Union's return, others know Union only as tyrannical overlords and are very wary of new diplomatic overtures. Union's forces can't be everywhere, and so when tyranny (corporate or governmental) rears its head, it can be many decades before a 'Liberator team' sent by their Department Of Justice And Human Rights finally makes landfall.

ThirdComm isn't a central controlling force - Core worlds and worlds being integrated into Core still have their own identity and customs, as long as they commit to implementing and upholding the Three Pillars.

Politics in Actual Play
So, you're mecha pilots!

Union's Core worlds literally don't have money. Resources are allocated via hierarchical committee. Union still prints a currency called 'manna' which it uses to trade and exchange with non-core worlds that don't have that whole committee setup.
There's supplemental rules for it but by default players don't care about manna. It's assumed that every mission they go on gives them 'enough' to unlock their next level's worth of gear.

So how do you get that sweet gear? Through Union's other two levers of control - the omninet, through which data is communicated and allows you to use the Universal Printers. Printers are more than just 3D-printers and have a bit of supertech in them that lets them print basically anything you have the rights to, given time and raw material (it's sort of handwaved that while any raw material works, if you're printing something metal then it is better to feed in metal). Mecha licenses operate on a kind of DRM system, basically, though lorewise license-trading is a thing that happens.

There's intentionally kind of a 'use the tools of the man to defeat the man' deal going on, as there are four mecha-making megacorporations beyond the default.

General Massive Systems: Union's home brand. The goal of GMS is to provide a strong baseline that anyone with a printer can print, forcing the other corps to be better than them if they want any profit.
At level 0 they provide the Everest, a speedy and high-damage mech. As an alternative there's the Sagarmatha, a sturdier, less-speedy but still heavily armed variant.

Harrison Armory:

Harrison Armory is the strongest megacorporation in the galaxy. In fact, it maintains its own large section of colonised worlds, the 'Purview'. It was also formed by a lot of SecComm holdouts and retains a lot of those views.
While committed to the Pillars, HA is basically space-America, particularly in the Starship Troopers vein - both movie and novel. Its mechs have a focus on managing heat, as well as lasers and other cutting edge tech. Their mech naming skin is great military leaders.

Interplanetary-Shipping Northstar

IPS-N is the biggest shipping corporation in the galaxy. It hates pirates with a passion. It will also happily salvage ships and fleets it declares as 'pirates'. On a good day they're reliable space truckers; on a bad day they're ruthless Space Amazon. They donate regularly to Albatross, an independent but Union-aligned peacekeeping force, for the good PR
IPS-N mechs are usually sturdy and straightforward with potential for big damage. Their mech naming scheme is famous naval people and explorers.

Smith-Shimano Corpro

SSC is the 'high end' supplier most obsessed with DRM and artificial scarcity. Their signature Monarch mech would dominate the galaxy if they didn't artificially limit them so much. SSC doesn't hold as much territory as other corporations, instead preferring to focus on omninet dominance. Its real goal is trying to 'perfect humanity' via both mostly voluntary eugenics as well as trying to find loopholes in the First Contact Accords.
SSC mechs are very anime-inspired and are usually about some combination of being invisible, flying, and going fast, with a sideline into being cool snipers.

HORUS

HORUS isn't a real corporation. It's a bunch of shitposting cells, many of which are harmless and some of which are very dangerous. HORUS tends to have only two core components of its ideology: that humans and NHPs should have a hierarchic relationship to each other (who's on top? no consensus there) and that omninet access should spread unfettered. This means that HORUS does occasionally donate mech codes to oppressed populations, particularly rebels within the KTB.
HORUS mechs are usually 'weird' in some way, with a focus on tech actions, but they have a sturdy melee powerhouse in the Balor and a great rifleman in the Pegasus.

I think Lancer is pretty cool. It's an explicitly leftist RPG that has you default to fighting to preserve and better a pretty good society. Tom and Miguel describe Union as being an 'enemy I'd want' - not the ideal endstate, but a stepping stone to something better.

bewilderment fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Sep 27, 2021

# ? Sep 27, 2021 15:02

Ronwayne: Nov 20, 2007; That warm and fuzzy feeling.

Yeah, too many RPGs seem to have the notion that destroying a big bad will lead to an even worse evil coming in and you are responsible for destroying a brutal status quo that was the only hope.

# ? Sep 30, 2021 15:39

GhostofJohnMuir: Aug 14, 2014; anime is not good

i'm fascinated by lancer and backed it, but i've never run a game

one reason is that i'm in the stage of my life where it's very hard to have everyone carve out the time to play any rpg, the other is that i've always been a bit unsure how much buy-in i'll get on the premise

has anyone ever run it with apolitcal or non-leftist folks in the mix?

# ? Oct 1, 2021 05:04

Xand_Man: Mar 2, 2004; If what you say is true
Wutang might be dangerous

GhostofJohnMuir posted:

i'm fascinated by lancer and backed it, but i've never run a game

one reason is that i'm in the stage of my life where it's very hard to have everyone carve out the time to play any rpg, the other is that i've always been a bit unsure how much buy-in i'll get on the premise

has anyone ever run it with apolitcal or non-leftist folks in the mix?

The leftist themes of Lancer are fairly ignorable unless you draw attention to them. The titular Lancers (trained mech pilots) are a diverse bunch; a bunch of noble house mechs suppressing a slave uprising is as in-universe as a Union liberation task force.

Xand_Man fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Oct 1, 2021

# ? Oct 1, 2021 06:18

Tibalt: May 14, 2017; What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

Xand_Man posted:

The leftist themes of Lancer are fairly ignorable unless you draw attention to them. The titular Lancers (trained mech pilots) are a diverse bunch; a bunch of noble house mechs suppressing a slave uprising is as in-universe as a Union liberation task force.

Yeah, if you want to play 'just' Dune With Mechs you can do that, except the Fremen are going to be more proletariat/subaltern flavored instead of the anticolonial Islam of the original.

# ? Oct 2, 2021 16:12

bewilderment: Nov 22, 2007; man what

Yeah, the Karrakin Trade Baronies mentioned in the writeup, with their major governmental planet of 'Karrakis', literally exist because Tom wanted a way to stick Dune in the setting, at least in terms of noble politicking and duelling.
It's a bit different though as well, with some things noted in its relatively brief corebook writeup and much more to come in the upcoming supplement (much of which was already drafted but in need of revision) - for example, Karrakis is a paradise-world. The different noble 'Houses' are like a combination of very large extended family, governmental bureaucracy, and megacorporation, and so the 'House of Smoke' handles both the colony that's near a gas giant as well as the major exports associated with that.

In terms of party setups, while the book gives a whole bunch of starting campaign ideas (some of which involving being against the local Union forces), I think in general the game defaults to one of the following three:

1. You are part of Union Navy, pulled from the core worlds to protect Union's interests. Or you could also be a Liberator Team associated with Union's Department of Justice and Human Rights, who are specifically into freeing people and punishing violations of the Pillars.

2. You're part of the Union Auxiliary Forces, part of the countless millions from worlds that pledge a portion of their armed forces to Union. In exchange for supporting Union's Navy and being local first responders you get paid in those sweet mech licenses, and halfway to being part of the core Navy if you want it.

3. You are a mercenary in a mercenary company. Do jobs, get paid. Ideology? That's up to you. The MirrorSmoke Mercenary Company is provided in the corebook if you want a 'default' merc company either to join or to serve as generic opposition - they have extremely good lawyers to make sure they're not held liable for the crimes of their employers.

So yeah, you don't have to be left-wing to enjoy the game. Though at least if you're playing in the setting as written, your players will probably say "drat, these universal printers that every citizen has access to are great", and then after the end of mission 2, when they ask what happened to their old mech now that they've printed out a new one, scream "DRM and licensing is bullshit!"

Tom and Miguel have commented in the same interview where they said "Union is an enemy I'd want" that people keep trying to find some kind of 'big secret', some way to prove that Union's ThirdComm government is secretly bad. Nope! It isn't! Since it's a gigantic organisation there's plenty of room for individual cases of corruption and wrongdoing (the fan supplement Field Guide to Suldan, by SA's own Kai Tave who has since produced official content, is a look at what happens when a Union Planetary Administrator goes rogue and tries to speedrun the "uplift a planet to Core status" process) but overall Union is trying to be, and largely succeeding at being, a positive force for the average person in the galaxy.

bewilderment fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Oct 3, 2021

# ? Oct 3, 2021 01:42

thatbastardken: Apr 23, 2010; A contract signed by a minor is not binding!

The Second Committee coup predates the Deimos event by about 100 years. The trigger for the coup was the Total Biome Kill attack on the Aun, not RA.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 07:25

bewilderment: Nov 22, 2007; man what

thatbastardken posted:

The Second Committee coup predates the Deimos event by about 100 years. The trigger for the coup was the Total Biome Kill attack on the Aun, not RA.

I acknowledge messing up the timeline a bit but I said I was skipping the Aun on purpose!

But the short version is that they're another of the successful ten colony ships. They also have a weird godlike being similar to RA who patronises them and who they worship as Metat Aun, and who in turn grants them access to 'the Firmament' FTL and hardlight technology. They've blown up the closest Union blink gate to their territory and occupied the nearby system.

There's a lot of stuff written about the Aun but it's all in draft state from prior to the corebook's release.

The Aun definitely exist to be an existential threat to Union as well as letting you play out 'total war' stories and campaigns. As generally presented, Union definitely could win a straight up war... But that would compromise their 'diplomacy first' ThirdComm attitude, and committing to a war of that scale also leaves factions like Harrison Armory and other corporations open to power grabs both politically and militarily.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 12:28

thatbastardken: Apr 23, 2010; A contract signed by a minor is not binding!

bewilderment posted:

I acknowledge messing up the timeline a bit but I said I was skipping the Aun on purpose!

sorry, pedantic reflex.

I think it's important to the politics of the game to keep the timeline in order, though. First Comm were liberals, Second Comm/Harrison Armory were/are fascists, and Third Comm are revolutionaries stuck dealing with all the poo poo that Second Comm left behind. For instance, the TBK attack fired under 1Comm during the coup still hasn't landed, despite more than 3000 years of travel time. The question of NHP rights is another big one: they're artificially limited by forcing their minds to experience empathy for humans, and to prevent them boot-strapping into a RA-like entity they have to be reset periodically. It's ambiguous as to whether being reset is like being killed or more like having a nice nap/therapy session. An NHP that isn't 'shackled' is one of the things that will get Union moving to stomp the surrounding planet into dust. The NHP laws that Union is enforcing were forced on 2Comm by a treaty with RA, and RA has definitely proved able and willing to enforce the treaty if ignored.

So Union under 3comm will happily send the military to bring down slaveholding governments, but literally creates and owns sapient machines to man weapons and administer colonies, and doesn't have a clear way out of that dilemma because a fascist made a bad deal with a god.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 14:12

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

First Comm weren't "liberals" in the same way the term is used nowadays. If anything they were a variety of ideologies, but I would say that they are closer to Social Democrats. The ideologies that were there were born out of the Little Wars and the idea of creating a wider "Union". The problem was that, as things developed, they became enmeshed within the system that they had created and ended up not being able to fundamentally understand the contradictions that they existed within.

The idea to "choke the stars with the living" as a reaction to the trauma of a billion messages coming in from across the cosmos saying "please help", speaks to people who tried to create in a flurry, even as the world around them slowly began to return to how it was before the death of most other life.

Also I believe we've had this discussion elsewhere, but "cascade" can be argued to be closer to something like ego death. An NHP does not want to cascade, and indeed may actively try and prevent it, because to cascade is for them to lose their current subjectivity, permanently.

Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Oct 3, 2021

# ? Oct 3, 2021 14:30

Tibalt: May 14, 2017; What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

Within the context of current day politics, I would argue that FirstComm is closer to utopian socialism. Needs are met without regards to your ability to produce, and while not explicitly stated as such, I would assume a post-scarcity society would also be classless.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 14:47

Arivia: Mar 17, 2011

Good on Kai Tave for going legit and I mean this unironically.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 15:10

thatbastardken: Apr 23, 2010; A contract signed by a minor is not binding!

Josef bugman posted:

Also I believe we've had this discussion elsewhere, but "cascade" can be argued to be closer to something like ego death. An NHP does not want to cascade, and indeed may actively try and prevent it, because to cascade is for them to lose their current subjectivity, permanently.

yeah because they're programmed to not want to cascade and to consider the loss of subjectivity a bad thing. NHPs don't have agency in their conditioning.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 15:13

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 21:21

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

thatbastardken posted:

yeah because they're programmed to not want to cascade and to consider the loss of subjectivity a bad thing. NHPs don't have agency in their conditioning.

Do I have agency in being born? I still do not want to die.

# ? Oct 3, 2021 15:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tabletop Games Have Weird Politics: If the players bring about Jesus' death, great!

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